Green is Best
by Toasterman
Summary: There are times when heresy exceeds the prowess of the Guard, but is not worthy of the Astartes. When these situations arise, there is only one force in the galaxy man can turn to: a legion of lab-grown xenos headed by the epitome of orky oddness.
1. Chapter 1

The Valkyrie struggled through the atmosphere, its hull accosted by the friction flares swirling around it. The engines were dead, as the planet's gravity well was enough to pull it down, and in the free fall, the only sound in the compartment was that of howling wind and the creaking of stressed steel.

Inquisitor Alexander Tripe stood behind the pilots in his armor, a blackened hulk of two tons of otherworldly neo-steel and weaponry, his cloak spilling down around his legs. His domed helmet was shut as he watched the turbulence beyond the plate glass of the cockpit window. The pilots were praying. Tripe ignored them.

His HUD overlaid the transponder signals of the craft around them on a strategic map of the area outlined with landing zone strips. In all, the force consisted of four heavy troopships and twelve Valkyries, representing forces from two full regiments of Alterian Brigadiers, all on course.

Tripe smiled. His orders were being followed to the letter. This was good.

With a series of blinks, Tripe linked his suit's transcom system to the Alterian inter-regiment voxnet and opened a channel. "Colonel Phellan," he said, "this is Inquisitor Tripe. Do you read me?"

"Yes, Inquisitor. I read you."

Phellan's voice, even tinged by the metallic vox crackle, was strong and confident. It was the voice of a man who had dropped into hell on more than a few occasions, and who wasn't afraid of death. Hopefully, what Tripe told him would be understood.

"Phellan, I didn't want to tell you this until we were heading planetside, but I'll need your men to hold their fire when we hit dirt."

There was a pause. "Come again, lord?"

"I said your men are ordered to keep their weapons slung, Colonel. We'll be meeting some friends groundside and I don't want your boys filling them with unnecessary pockmarks. I don't need them riled."

"Riled?" Phellan sounded on the verge of laughing. "With respect, sir, my men don't 'rile' anyone. We kill, plain and simple, and there is nothing that can stand in our way."

Tripe sighed just below what the audio pickups could detect. Phellan was Alterian, alright, right down to his arrogant core. If there had been more time, Tripe would have procured a better force for this, but as it stood, everything else in the sector was engaged. He had tried the Dogs of War—a unit of armored crusaders Tripe had himself helped to found—but the Battle Saint's Equerry had told him to shove off, so he was left with these two regiments. The Alterians were good, but Phellan's boasts were far from the truth. They were able bodies who could shoot straight, and that's all Tripe needed.

"Who are your contacts, anyway?" the Colonel asked.

"Orks."

There was another pause. When Phellan spoke again, his voice had lost its humor. "I fear there has been some interference. Could you repeat that?"

Beyond the front window, the atmosphere fell away, revealing to Tripe the world below in all its battered, besieged glory. Pyres of smoke from burning hive cities filtered up to meet them, forming banks of clouds that skirted the troposphere and shrouded the deserts connecting the civilized areas with stretches of inky shadow. Directly below, the landing area was clear.

"Orks, Colonel," Tripe said. "Our contacts are orks."

_Green is Best_

_Chapter One: Sylvann IX_

Sylvann IX's troubles began six months prior, when the plague that had accosted the five other populated worlds in the system finally made its way through the blockade and into circulation in the planet's cities. Men started to fall to the plague, and as they did, it became apparent that the nature of the malady was chaotic with a capital 'C'. The Fell Powers took root on Sylvann IX, and the world burned.

The elements of the world's militia untainted by the plague committed a self-extermination of hives Uurkor and Sanus with atomic weapons, but the attacks did little. What survived was horribly mutated by the radiation, and the decaying undead populations festering in the cities only grew stronger with their new leader caste.

Those additionally mutated were labeled Chosen by their kind. Their loyalist name went unknown, as soon there were no more loyalists left to speak it. The last militia stronghold fell two months prior. After that, the decayed formed up and began to work to make it off-world using the cargo ships docked in the orbiting stations.

Before they could leave, however, the docks were smashed by an incoming meteor, a meteor that landed in the wastes between Uurkor and Targg hives. What came out of the meteor was something new, and something that for the past month and a half had proven virtually unkillable to the plagued children of Nugle that made their homes on Sylvaan IX.

()

The Green Marauders watched the Alterian troopships set down in the desert, unseen behind their sand canvas covers and shaded magnoculars. They watched as the Alterians assembled outside their vessels, and as the regiments' tanks and transports rumbled out onto the hardpan, they held steady. None of them would move without express orders from above. They were trained well.

Tripe watched them from alongside Colonel Phellan. With sensors greater than some frigates' augury arrays, Tripe could make out the telltale signs of the Marauders' presence; a toppled rock here, a thermal scent oozing from the dirt, the distinct stench of week-old poo crusting under the sun.

"So, where are your xenos?" Phellan asked. There was clear venom in his voice, but at least he hadn't tried to order the death of a perceived heretic.

Tripe was thankful for that. He rather liked Phellan, despite his arrogance, and it would have been a shame to be forced to kill the man.

"They're here, Colonel." Tripe gestured to the dunes around the landing site. "They're all around us, in fact."

Phellan's body tensed ever so slightly. He was good at hiding it, but his hand still dropped to the laspistol holstered on his thigh. "Well, why don't they come out?" he asked.

Up on one of the nearest dunes, something moved and glinted in the sunlight.

"They will," Tripe replied, deciding to leave the Colonel in ignorance of the sniper targeting his head. "When I give them the signal and they're good and ready."

"Why don't you?"

"Your men are still jumpy. Calm them down and I'll give the all clear."

Phellan's eyes narrowed, but he got to work. "Callan? Vox."

As the Colonel took to the pack on his vox man's back, Tripe busied himself with comparing the Alterian and Marauder deployments. The regiments were arrayed carefully, in a standard deployment pattern designed for flexibility in a sudden attack. The Marauders were in perfect ambush positions, and if a firefight were to break out, the Alterians would be slaughtered.

"Alright, Inquisitor, our weapons are down. Call out your people."

"Thank you, Colonel," Tripe said.

Drawing his rifle, the Inquisitor fired a single shot, sending a spike into the air at hypersonic velocity. The rip-tear of the weapon's report echoed across the dunes.

Two thousand orks stood from surrounding dunes in perfect unison. They looked down on the human interlopers, eyes hidden behind red-tinted visors and goggles. In their hands, the aliens clutched an assortment of bolters and chain-weapons, with the larger totting lascannons and multi-barreled autocannons.

Sand and dirt sloughed from their bodies in great splashes, revealing red and black plates of heavy armor, held together by carapace weaving not unlike that worn by the Alterians. On their chests was a symbol of their allegiance: a double-headed eagle.

Phellan uttered a string of curses in his native Alterian, capping off the soliloquy with a heartfelt 'by the Emperor', before finally addressing Tripe. "They wear the Aquilla! These xenos wear the Aquilla!"

"Yes."

"Why are we not killing them?"

Tripe looked back at the Colonel. "Well, for one, you can't. They would tear you apart in minutes, and leave your men dead on the field. And for another, they are allies. They have killed more than enough of the Emperor's enemies to earn those Aquillas, more even than your proud regiments. Besides, these orks fight for the same reason you do."

"And what reason is that?" Phellan asked, his eyes narrowed.

Tripe smiled and fired another shot into the sky.

The orks answered him with a unified battle cry.

"_For the Emperor!"_

()

Of course, the Green Marauders were no more wild-born orks than Tripe was an eldar farseer. They had not begun their lives as forest-raised sludge, and had not grown up normally in the company of a rampaging Waaagh! Not one of them had ever served a Warboss in their life, and never once had they killed Imperial citizens in the name of some pantheon of pagan xenos gods.

Instead, the orks of the Marauders had experienced a different kind of life path, one that began in gene-vats far below the surface of Mars in a laboratory of the Adeptus Biologis, the offspring of Project Vanguard.

Their ork genes had been twisted, giving birth to a saner, stabilized strain of orkoids that shared a communal link and firm instinct to fight mankind's enemies.

Of course, the project had been shut down with only two thousand working models to show for, but that did not preclude them from seeing combat.

Their natural ork stubbornness, lack of fear, genetic faith in the Emperor, and newly ingrained regenerative healing factor made them too good an asset to pass up, and thanks to Tripe, the project's products had been assembled into the Marauders under the leadership of an earlier prototype of their unique genus.

That prototype was named Gort Malog Gragnatz da Humie Luva.

()

It was Gort that greeted Tripe on Sylvann IX, his grubby hands and arms of coil-strength muscles catching the Inquisitor in a ferocious bear hug.

"Boss!" Gort rumbled with happiness. He picked Tripe up, the strength of his embrace putting enough stress on Tripe's armor to make it creak as he was swung around by the gleeful ork. "Gooda see ya, Boss! Gooda see ya, gooda see ya, gooda see ya!"

"Likewise, Gort," Tripe grunted. "Please set me down."

"Sure fing, Boss."

Gort dropped Tripe, and the Inquisitor caught himself on Phellan, using the Colonel's shoulders as handholds. Phellan didn't look happy about it, but then again, he wasn't happy about any of this.

Tripe ignored him and looked up at Gort. "Allysn's injections must be taking hold," he said. "You've grown at least another two feet."

"Yeaher." Gort shrugged arms as large as tank cannons, and his huge helmet wobbled on his head.

At nine feet, seven inches, Gort was a titan made of green flesh and super-hardened bone. He wore nothing save greaves and boots of tough metal, and the Aquilla was burned into the flesh of his chest—seared on by plasma to counteract his healing ability.

"How's me mum?" Gort asked.

Tripe realized too late that he had used Allysn's name, and had to change topics quickly. He wasn't about to let this degenerate into one of Gort's mother's boy tangents. There was work to be done.

"She says hello. How have things gone here on Sylvann?"

"Can ya tell'er I says 'ey back?"

"Yes, Gort, I can." Tripe snapped his fingers in front of the massive ork's nose. "Now focus. I need a situation report. Now."

And so Gort picked his nose and gave his report while chewing what he slurped off his finger.


	2. Chapter 2

"_You will be their de-facto leader. We will make your bones unbreakable, your skull uncrackable. We will give you the strength of a hundred orks, and the cunning of the finest lord commanders. When you are struck, your wounds will heal faster than ever before, and when you attack, you will do so with the crushing might of the Imperium itself. You will be unstoppable."_

-Magos Biologis Allisyn Charlyta

_Two Years Prior to the War on Sylvann IX_

Gort Malog-Gragnatz was born by the name of Subject 11053 in a tube located in the deepest recesses of the Mechanicus Biologis complex on Mars. The complex was part of Project Sleeper, a project funded under-the-table by the Inquisition to create genetically conditioned sleeper orks.

Pre-programmed to behave exactly like an ork within a given mob, when the psychic influence of a Waaagh! grew strong enough, the subject was intended to 'awaken' from their mental slumber and begin killing everything around them, to cause as much mayhem as possible in a given gathering of xenos.

One of this inspired project's creations was Gort. He was sent into the wild and hooked up with a Waaagh! on the planet Dancer VI. Starting out as Gort Malog-Gragnatz da Shoota Boy, he eventually worked his way up to Gort Malog-Gragnatz da Flash Git before the day he awakened.

On that day, he declared himself Gort Malog-Gragnatz da Humie Luva, and proceeded to slaughter every ork in an eight block radius.

He escaped the Waaagh! to find his human brethren, a common side effect of most early conditionings and normally the point at which the sleeper ork died by Imperial gunfire.

Fortunately for Gort, he came into contact with visitor-from-another-universe Fredrick Jax, the only human being in the galaxy with the first instinct to make friends with aliens instead of shooting them.

Gort remained with Jax for nearly a full year, accompanying the Confederate as he became a Battle Saint of the Imperium and waged war against humanity's enemies. He rescued a High Lords' daughter, made friends with a Techmarine, killed Chaos Marines, beat necrons with an axe, talked to many humans, and learned a lot about the galaxy.

And now, Gort Malog Gragnatz sat in a room beneath the surface of Mars, picking his nose and watching the chronometer on the wall, trying to count off the ticks of the second hand beyond ten. He knew that there had to be numbers past it, but he couldn't remember them. He wanted to do something else but the room was empty.

Gort remained like this for thirty minutes—struggling to count and picking his nose—until finally, bored beyond belief, he took a poo in his 'ardpants.

"Sticky," he muttered.

()

"Eloquent, isn't he?" Inquisitor Tripe propped his arm against the two-way mirror, watching the Gort take off his trousers to smell his own excrement.

"It's normal," said the woman next to him, flipping through a dataslate displaying the ork's vital statistics. "Probably learned behavior from his time in theatre."

Tripe smiled. "Probably, Miss Charlyta? I didn't know you used that word."

"I have little data on Subject 11053's time in the wild, so it is impossible for me to accurately assess the origins of his peculiar personality traits." She looked at Tripe and wiped a strand of red hair from her face. "And Inquisitor, it would be more professional to use my title, not my name. I did not work eighty years to be called 'Miss'."

And at that, Tripe lost his smile. She would be attractive, he reflected, were she not such a cold bitch.

"Absolutely, Magos Biologis," he said. "What do you think? Is he fit for my purposes?"

Charlyta kept her gaze on the dataslate as she replied. "As he stands, no, but with the right modifications and the addition of the new formula, I think that he would do quite nicely."

"Alright," Tripe replied, reaching for the door. "Let's go talk to him, then. Before he eats his own shit."

_Green is Best_

_Chapter Two: How Gort got to the Party_

A door in the wall opened and two humans marched in. The first one was a man in black power armor with a big coat. Gort knew him as the Inquisitor named Tripe from his time with Boss Jax's Dogs of War—a human unit he'd been attached to for the past few months. Gort wasn't sure how many it had been. He wasn't so good at counting.

The other was a woman in a black cloak. When she pulled her hood down, a shock of red hair spilled out and made Gort jump a little. She looked at him with hard green eyes and her mouth never smiled. She was a scary human, alright, but Gort loved her with all his heart. He had known her all his life, from the instant she pulled him from a tube and burned her image into his memory.

Excited as he was, Gort did not speak. He never spoke unless spoken to, especially with these two.

"Subject 11053," she said. She always called him that. It made Gort all fuzzy. "Do you remember the last time we spoke?" Gort nodded. "And what did we talk about?"

Gort grinned. "Youse told me I'z a 'isolated incident' an' such an' that I'z 'beneficial'."

Tripe raised his eyebrows at her, but she ignored him. "11053, are you aware that you are special?"

"I'z special?"

"Yes. Very special."

"How special's dat?"

"The most special, 11053."

"Oh." Gort grinned. "Dat's real flash, Boss."

She nodded. "Indeed. You are the first lab-grown sleeper Ork to survive and make it back to Mars after implantation in a horde." She stopped herself. "None of that holds any significance to you at all, does it?"

"Eh, nah. But it sounds real nice."

Shrugging, she gestured to Tripe, who stepped forward. The grindy bits in his armor groaned when he moved. Gort chuckled a little.

"The fact is, Gort, that we have a new job for you." Tripe folded his arms behind his back and looked down at Gort. "We want you to lead a strike force against the planet Graymalkyn in the Ultima Segmentum. It's a world corrupted by Chaos, and all of its inhabitants are expendable, but the rich mineral deposits make planetary bombardment economically unfeasible. We need the surface cleansed for re-colonization."

Gort didn't understand a lot of what Tripe said, but he managed to put a few of the words together. Chaos was bad and they wanted him to kill Chaos. Gort could do that, but he had a question.

"Whut'da ya want me ta lead?"

Tripe smiled. "This."

The wall behind him retracted into the ceiling with a rumble, revealing a secondary chamber filled with row upon row of tanks, each filled with a thick, fungus-like liquid. Gort stood from the table and marched into the room, his snazzgun held at his side. He rapped on the glass of the nearest tank, and from the murk within he saw something stir.

"Whut's all dis?"

"These are the newest generation of humie luvas, Gort," answered his mum. "These are your brothers."

Tripe picked up for her. "These are the Orks that you will lead in the cleansing of Graymalkyn, all eight thousand of them. They are specially gene-forged to be the best of the Ork race, susceptible only to the heaviest of firepower and nigh-unstoppable. With them, you can crush any resistance.

"They will be your sword, Gort. These lab-born will be your extended body, your weapon against the darkness at the edges of Imperial space. With them, you will be the ultimate killing machine, and in that way, you will burn Graymalkyn—and any other tainted world—into the forgotten mists of history."

Gort smiled a big toothy smile. "Whut we waitin' fer, den? Imma have meself a Waaagh!"

_Graymalkyn, One Year and Eight Months Prior to the War on Sylvann IX_

"Hit 'em hard!" Gort hollered and laid into the man in front of him with the chainblade attached to the hilt of his hammer.

The fallen guardsman screamed as his chest cavity was ripped open, airing his foul blood into the atmosphere and tinging the area around Gort with the stench of corrupted death. For his part, the gene-forged ork ignored it, and kicked the corpse aside before hefting his bolter in one grubby fist.

As he poured bolts across the courtyard, the rest of his Marauders poured around him and rushed the defenders, their guns chattering into the retreating guardsmen. The Chaos boys were quick on their feet, but not quick enough. The Marauders caught up to them before the end of the hall and they died in a melee of fists and axes.

"Keep goin'!" Gort yelled. "Git it dun fast!"

From the interior of the palace came a fullisade of las-shot on full-auto—the rapid snaps of hellguns. A handful of orks died from the blasts, their bodies smacking the rubble-strewn courtyard with wet splashes of fungi-addled blood. The rest of the orks fell into cover and returned fire with their boltguns, ripping swathes from the marble façade around the palace entrance.

Gort didn't duck, but instead stood in the clear and opened up with his heavy bolter. The weapon chugged in his fist, the bolts roaring across the space and detonating the black plate armor of the palace guards.

After a moment, the guards retreated ever so slightly, and began to regroup. It wasn't a huge fall back, but it was all Gort needed.

"Go git 'em, boyz!"

The orks let out a collective roar and charged, their booted feet thundering across the courtyard and up the steps to the palace entrance behind a lead of bolts and solid shot that splintered the enemy defense and left the orks with an easy attack.

Gort led them in, laying about with his hammer and pulverizing the palace guards with ease. A lasblast singed his temple and the ork swung around at the attacker, a guard half his height. The guard threw himself aside with uncanny agility for a human his size, and Gort's hammer struck a pillar instead. Marble blasted out from the crackling head, and the human rolled to his feet, keeping up a steady stream of fire into Gort's stomach.

The massive ork roared and brought around the hilt of his hammer, slicing through the guard's hellgun with his chainblade before kicking him in the chest. His armored boot sent the human flying back into the palace lobby, past his comrades, and into a wall, his bones turned to powder.

The orks broke into the lobby and pushed through without stopping. Some of the palace guards turned to fight and were swept aside, their bodies broken and bleeding under the thundering boots of the horde. Those that continued to flee were pursued, and the orks flooded into the wings and spires of the palace, the sounds of their slaughter echoing throughout the chambers.

Gort found himself at the middle of the pack headed for the throne room, preceeded by his own bloodthirsty troops, and reached the approach hallway behind them.

Malok reached the end of the hall first and kicked open the door to the throne room. One of the larger boys at only three heads shorter than Gort himself, Malok took the barrage of las-shot like a champion, and only fell after a grenade took his head off at the neck. Malok's body fell back and hit the tile with a thud, and the rest of the boys threw themselves to the flanks of the corridor to avoid the outpouring of fire.

Gort roared and charged headlong into the fire, soaking it up with his massive, brutish chest, and broke into the throne room, his back shattering the doorframe. His bolter swung up and decapitated the crews of the three support nests in quick succession, and he backhanded a trio of troopers across the room with his axe. The defense shaken, he called back into the hall for reinforcements.

Thirty seconds later, every human in the chamber was dead, and Gort was standing in front of the throne itself. Constructed of bones and upholstered by human skin, the throne was a hideous work of Chaos, and to any human mind in the area, it would be a corrupting influence beyond any other, able to turn one to the Fell Powers with but a glance.

But not to an ork mind.

With a mighty roar, Gort brought his thunder hammer—a weapon meant for two-handed use by an Astartes in Terminator plate—down on the throne. The head of the hammer expelled a burst of blue force, and the throne shattered into countless billions of bone fragments. The dried skin was incinerated.

"Dere," Gort said, "all dun."

He turned to his Marauders, lifted the hammer skyward, threw his head back, and let out a howl. "WAAAGH!"

"_WAAAGH!"_ the orks around him roared.

()

Inquisitor Tripe walked across the courtyard and made his way into the palace, stepping over the bodies of palace guards and orks on his way up to the throne room, his suit's servos growling in the empty halls. In places he would pass orks on cleanup detail, gathering weapons and ammo, and had to return Aquilla salutes to the lab-bred xenos.

As he continued on, he could hear the greenskins talking to each other in hushed tones. Audio magnification revealed the orks' name for him: Capey.

Tripe made his way into the throne room, stepping over a particularly large ork body, and found a carnal hall. Blood covered everything, from the mosaic-inlaid floor to the chandelier and everything in between.

Orks milled about the room, piling bodies and collecting weapons. They did so with a chatty efficiency, giggling to each other as they heaped the corpses of the corrupted guard into mounds of dead flesh and armor. As Tripe watched, a flamer-bearing ork made his way to the top of the room and lit up the largest of the cadaver piles, one that had been constructed atop the broken remains of the throne of the chaos lord.

As the funeral pyre's smoke drifted out of the broken skylight, Tripe made his way to Gort's side.

"Good work," he said.

"Yeaher," Gort replied. He pulled something unspeakable and slimy from behind his ear and examined it as he continued. "Fink we got da job dun, Boss?"

Tripe nodded. "I suppose so. You isolated and dealt with the planet's defense forces and crushed their leadership. Without Castonis here to lord over them, the cleanup should be easy for any Guard regiment."

Gort perked up. "Who'z dat?"

"Who's who?"

"Castoonass."

"Castonis," Tripe corrected. "The Chaos Lord that led this insurrection. The man who sat on that throne. The man you killed."

Gort shook his head. "Chair wuz empty whin we gots 'ere, Boss."

Tripe was halfway through his next question when the door on the south side of the chamber blasted off its hinges and Castonis burst into the room. He was exactly as Tripe's intelligence had suggested: mutated to superhuman size, his flesh of a pale sheen, and his mouth filled with rows of sickle teeth. Castonis held a lascannon in his one recognizable hand—the other was a mass of tentacles and bone spikes.

Four orks rushed the lord and died for their troubles, impaled and tossed across the room where they flopped to the ground, little more than bloody rags of flesh and perforated meat. The lascannon flared with a brilliant spear of light and another ork vanished in a wash of ozone-tinged smoke.

Tripe reached for his rifle, but wasn't fast enough. The second lascannon shot caught him in the shoulder and tossed him around, his arm a superheated slag of melting steel and flesh.

As he fell, screaming, Tripe saw Gort snap into motion.

()

Gort rushed the Chaos Lord, head held low between his shoulders, hammer held at guard across his chest. Castonis saw him coming and swung his lascannon around, squeezing off another thick beam of heat. Gort deflected it with his hammer, the energized head countering the energies of the beam and sending it careening off into the ceiling, before closing with his enemy.

Swinging his thunder hammer, Gort destroyed the lascannon, and brought his chainblade up into Castonis's armpit. The Chaos Lord took the attack in stride, looping his arm around the hammer's haft and pulling, throwing Gort off balance. Castonis's arm, the one made of spikes and tentacles, swung round and smashed against Gort's chest. The bone spikes pierced his skin and drew blood, while the tentacles made a grab for his throat.

Grunting in pain, Gort bit down on the tentacles and threw his head back, ripping a shock of the fleshy appendages from their roots. Castonis screamed, and Gort, freed momentarily and bleeding foul blood from his lips, threw the Lord with monumental strength across the room and onto one of the burning piles of his followers.

Castonis's impact tossed sparks and torched flesh into the air, and he rolled free, coming to his feet just outside the flames. A squad of orks attacked him and Castonis swept them aside, breaking heads and throwing some into the fire at his back.

"That all you got?" he asked in a voice straight from the pits of hell.

"Nah." Gort tossed his heavy bolter down. It was out of ammo anyway. "Let's do dis."

Gort threw himself at the Chaos Lord, and they met halfway in an explosion of thunder and blood. Death followed swiftly, and in mere seconds, Gort stood atop the broken body of the Fell Lord, a series of gashes on his chest slowly knitting back together. Castonis's head was nonexistent, and his armor was rent and broken under the warlord.

Around him, the orks roared their approval.

**Author's Note: This story is a tie-in with _The Confederate_, a long-running and somewhat-popular StarCraft/Warhammer40k crossover. Gort originated in that story, but you do not have to know anything about _The Confederate_ to enjoy _Green is Best_, because aside from Tripe's armor, there isn't one StarCrafty thing within these pages. **

**However, you may need a sense of humor. Gort is far from a serious fellow, and the following story won't be all that dramatic. It will have lotsa dakka, though, so if you're into that, then keep on reading.**

**The update cycle for this fic will be once a weekend until it's run has finished, a run that will last (optimistically) around fifteen chapters.  
**

**Oh, and please, drop a review. The kiddos coming over from _The Confederate _know this already, but I do like reviews (y'know, because I'm a writer), so please drop one, even if it's just, "i likd it U shouldz rite moar, plz."**

**Anyway, see you next Saturday.  
**


	3. Chapter 3

_"The Orks plague the galaxy from the end to end with their ceaseless warring and strife. They are a race rooted so deeply in war that peace is utterly incomprehensible to them. I pray with all my faith that some great catastrophe will annihilate them but I fear that ultimately it is they, not we, who shall rule the galaxy."_

-Xanthius, High Lord of Terra

_Somewhere in the Warp, One Year Prior to the War on Sylvann IX_

Gubbs watched the shuttle as it coasted toward the hulk. The faint mist of discharged plasma orbiting its thrusters registered on Gubbs's screen, and as the shuttle's vector became clearer, the ork frowned.

"Whut's dis?" he asked, pointing at the screen.

Gaz, one of the boyz under Gubbs's command, looked up from his gun screen. "Looks like a 'uttle ta me, Boss."

"Looks like a 'uttle?" Gubbs mocked. "Looks like a 'uttle, ya say!" He pulled out his stubber and discharged a round into the ceiling. "Git yer gunz and fings pointin' at it now, or I'z gonna kick yer arse out da door ta make sure it's a 'uttle!"

Gaz and the rest of the gun crews swung around to their stations, and in a moment, a hundred ship-to-ship plasma cannons were bearing down on the incoming vessel. Calmly, Gubbs put his helmet on and tried the boom mic. Static washed back in his ear.

Cursing, Gubbs smacked the side of his head with a wrench, wiped a gobbet of goop from the mic's speaky bit, and tired again to more success.

"Ey, Boss? Dis 'ere's Gubbs down on da gunz deck. Gots sumfing ya might wanna hava looksee at."

_Green is Best_

_Chapter Three: Marauders/Visions of Chaos_

Two kilometers away, situated at the heart of the tangled mess of ships and space debris that was the 'Ulk, the leader of the Green Marauders stirred in his throne. He'd been enjoying a good nap up until then, but Gubbs's call had woken him up with an abrupt squawk in his ear.

"Whut's it, Gubbs?" Gort asked, voice tinged by the mucus that had built up along his tongue during sleep.

"Gots a 'uttle down 'ere on an in'cept vector," Gubbs replied. "Fink we oughtta blast it?"

Gort sat up in his command throne, a seat made of rusted metal and broken piping. Carefully, he worked the mic closer to his mouth with his massive fingers. This next part was important, and Gort wanted to make sure his orders were followed.

"Gubbs, dat's da Black Boss's shuttle," he said. "Ya don't shoot it, ya git me?"

"Yeaher, Boss." Gubbs sounded depressed. Even if he was a loyal humie luva, Gubbs was still an ork. Not shooting would always be worse than shooting. "Want me ta let 'im in?"

Gort stood up. "Yeaher, Gubbs. Let 'im in."

He hug up his vox helm and coughed loudly. The rest of the orks on the bridge didn't pay attention, all but one.

Fert knew what the cough meant, and came scurrying from wherever he went when he wasn't talking to Gort, dragging the Boss's thunder hammer and big gun with him.

"'Ere ya go, Boss!" he squealed, holding up the hilt of the hammer with all the strength in his tiny arms.

Gort picked the hammer up with one hand and rested it over his shoulder. He took the two gauntlets from Fert next, fitting them on over his big hands carefully. They were made of grox-hide, with strips of adamantium woven in to make the Boss's punches hit harder. He barely looked at his gretchin helper, save for one sidelong glance at the gun.

"Gimme," he said, reaching down, hand open.

Fert did as asked, hefting the weapon by the barrel until Gort took it from him. The Boss held the gun in front of him, regarding its three barrels with interest. He wiggled the drum magazine between his thumb and forefinger approvingly.

"Got more?" he asked.

"Yeaher, Boss." Fert hastily undid the drawstrings on his tote bag, revealing fifty or more duplicate magazines. "Gotz lotsa options. 'Splosive, fizzy, melty, all kinds."

Gort looked at the bag, mouth closed in thought. "Gimme sum fizzys and 'splosives," he said. "And a melty."

Fert didn't move. "Gimme a toof, Boss?"

One of the Boss's teeth was worth a lot on the gretchin decks—enough to buy Fert a new pair of pants and some boots, the ones with the real flash spiky bits on the toes. Plus, it was insurance against getting your head beat in. If you had one of the Boss's teeth, then it meant he liked you, and no one wanted to hurt one of the Boss's friends.

Gort pulled one out of his mouth and tossed it to Fert without a second thought. It would grow back in a couple of minutes, anyway.

"Thanks, Boss!"

Fert pulled the magazines out and handed them to Gort one at a time, much to the amusement of the Marauders watching from the sides of the bridge. Fert would have tried to sell to them, but wasn't sure they would like him much. Even if the new humie loving bosses were nicer than the red-eyed old ones, Fert wasn't sure they were above beating in a nosey gretchin's head.

Gort tucked the magazines into his combat webbing and gestured away with the head of his thunder hammer. "Git outta 'ere," he said.

"Yes, Boss."

Fert scrambled out of the bridge, bag over his shoulder and tooth in his hands.

(' ')

Retz Tarrot Urraskitz heard the order to open the 'Ulk and replied with earnest. After so long working on the mechanisms of the 'Ulk, Retz was more than excited to finally put them into use. It had been a long time coming, too, since he had last opened the Mouff.

He punched the button with relish, and, standing at the window of his workshop, he watched the Mouff open. Gears grinded in the vast hall before him, a hall that ran two kilometers from the center of the 'Ulk to the outer layer, and the sections of the hall began to open. A hollow pop sounded from the far end, followed by the rush of air being pulled from the titanic chamber by the sucking vacuum beyond.

Retz pulled his air mask over his mouth. He was pretty sure that his workshop was sealed, but he wasn't going to take any chances.

The mechanisms built into the hall forced the masses of steel around it outward, expanding a corridor to the space beyond slowly but surely. When it was done five minutes later, the 'Ulk looked like it had sprouted a mouth.

"Mouff open, Boss," Retz said into his helmet mic.

A moment later and the shuttle entered, flying directly into the mouth.

(' ')

Gort met the shuttle in the landing chamber adjacent to the bridge. A large chamber, with the landing pad itself taking up only a small portion of its overall size, the room was able to accommodate the rest of the Marauders in full battle dress. Gubbs stood next to his Warboss, stubber and slasher slung, with his arms crossed.

Gubbs's kompany stood behind him, milling around impatiently. Like their leader, not one of them was a big fan of the Inquisitor who kept interrupting the Boss's Krusade. They were supposed to fight for the humies, not sit around talking about it like they _were_ humies.

"Boss—" he started.

"No," Gort cut him off. He knew from experience where the conversation was headed, and he wanted nothing to do with it. "Boss Tripe's me friend, and youse gotta r'spect dat."

"But Boss—"

Gort held up a finger. "No buts, Gubbs. I'z da Boss, and dis is 'ow we do fings. Git it?"

Gubbs stared at his Warboss, muscles twitching in anger as he tried to fight the genetic urge to fight Gort right there. Sensing that, Gort squared himself with Gubbs, fists bunched in a display of power.

"Git it?" he asked again.

Finally, Gubbs relented. "Yeaher, Boss."

As they went back to watching the shuttle land, Gort put in one last thing.

"He does talk too gorkin' much, though."

Gubbs laughed. "Yeaher. Sorry, Boss."

"Eh," Gort shrugged. "It's whateva."

The shuttle came to a halt on the pad and, after a moment, dropped its ramp. Inquisitor Tripe strode out onto the deck in his armor.

Ten seconds off cue, Retz's auto-pipes surged into life, blaring a raucous symphony of off key horns in some kind of failing mimicry of a greeting band. Tripe smiled at the display and walked directly up to Gort.

"I can see you're doing well here, Gort."

"I gotz a 'ulk."

"That you do," Tripe agreed. "What's it called?"

"Da 'Ulk." Gort's face was very serious.

Tripe nodded. "I should have figured. Well, are you ready to do more killing?"

The entirety of the Green Marauders roared in the affirmative, overriding the music and the persistent groans of the space hulk around them.

_Battle Barge _Eternal Siege, _Two Days Later_

Alarms wailed throughout the bridge in a rhythmic chant as mortal slaves ran to and fro, putting out electrical fires sparked by the impact. Many had died in the initial ship-to-ship smash, and those that were left were either fatally injured and crying out to the Dark Gods for help, or too occupied keeping the ship together to care.

At the heart of this chaos, Warsmith Delgado Mettarion sat forward in his command throne. "Helm, I want a status report! What has happened?"

The helmsman didn't respond on account of the piece of ceramite debris lodged in his face. In his place, Mettarion's second in command, a sergeant named Torassus, hauled the pulled the helmsman away from his console and gave the Warsmith his answer.

"The enemy hulk has clashed with our bow, covering sections 1/alpha through 66/gamma."

"That's halfway up the damn ship!" Mettarion gripped his armrest, his clawed hand pulverizing it. "That's impossible! Our inertia would have sundered it."

Torassus shook his head. "It ate us."

"What?"

"It ate us," the sergeant repeated. "The hulk distended jaws and engulfed half of our ship. Pressure is building on the gamma decks. It's trying to bite off the bow."

Mettarion stood up and pushed Torassus aside to get a look at the screen himself.

It was true. By Perturbo's blood but it was true. The hulk was trying to bite off the bow of the battle barge.

"Weapon!" Mettarion shouted. "Fire all prow weapons!"

"Unable!" came the answer.

The Warsmith rounded on the mortal. "Why so?"

The slave officer held his broken arm as he replied, a pained expression on his face. "All forward gun crews are unresponsive."

Mettarrion strode up to the mortal. He was so angry that acid was spilling from his lips and sizzling against his black-and-gold armor.

"Why?" he hissed.

"Because they are dead, lord." The slave looked at his feet. "We are being boarded."

Mettarion cut the slave in half and pounded toward the door, his power claw snapping in a residual gesture of wrath. "Iron Warriors!" he bellowed into his vox. "Move into the forward sections to repel boarders!"

"Iron Within!" Torassus added, and throughout the ship, 200 sons of Perturabo roared the rest of the pledge as one.

"_Iron Without!"_

(' ')

Gubbs led his kompany along the spine of the battle barge, cutting through slaves manning the arrays of ship-to-ship cannons built into that area. Resistance was light and made of weak autoguns, something that the two hundred orks weren't bothered by. The projectiles, where they managed to strike Gubbs's men, were either deflected by their warplate or pushed out by their always-healing bodies.

Gubbs himself took a round in the cheek from a slave driver, blowing out a chunk of his jaw line and spraying blood across his shoulder pad. Angered by the hit, Gubbs lifted the slave driver off the deck in a one-handed stranglehold. His boys ran around him without comment; they knew better than to stand in the way of their Kaptin when he was angry.

"You hit me," he growled. The slave driver whimpered in his grasp. "I'z gonna hit you back."

The man's head connected with the bulkhead, exploding like an overripe fruit. Gubbs smashed the dead body into the wall three more times before he was satisfied, and even then only stopped because he heard something.

It was a new sound; flat, harsh, and accompanied by the stench of fresh blood and fire.

Gubbs smiled, the expression twisted by the thin muscles of his slowly reforming mouth.

Bolter fire. The sound was bolter fire.

The Chaos boys were finally coming out to play.

(' ')

"Orks!" Mettarion roared as he waded into the xenos, his claw disemboweling orks with every swing. "Orks! We've been wrongfooted by greenskins!"

Thirty Iron Warriors slogged into the gun decks alongside their Warsmith, Sergeant Torassus amongst them, adding his bolter to the fray. He shot an ork in the face and kicked the corpse backward, sending it tumbling end for end into an array of cannon shells.

Retargeting, Torassus had almost forgotten about the ork when he saw it getting back up, the hole in its ruined face regrowing. Still without eyes or half a brain, the ork did little more than stumble about drunkenly. But the fact remained that it had died and was now moving again.

"Lord, I believe these may be more than ordinary greenskins!"

Mettarion stopped in the middle of his rant and regarded his sergeant skeptically, his claw shoved into the chest cavity of a xenos. "How so?"

Torassus had been about to explain the regenerating ork he had seen, and how if all of them did that, then the tactical applications of such a boarding operation were more feasible and presented the Iron Warriors with a very serious problem.

In doing so, Torassus would have easily calmed his Warsmith's ire, and Mettarion would have subsequently ordered a change of tactics that resulted in the Iron Warriors pulling back into the enginarium. There, they would have spent the better part of the next seven hours luring in orks and hurling them into the plasma reactor, never to regenerate again.

But Torassus didn't get the chance. Instead, his brain was scrambled by a chainaxe and his five thousand-year life ended there, blood leaking out onto the grated ceramite flooring.

Gubbs pulled his chainaxe free of the Iron Warrior and spun to face the next enemy, a huge warrior in the plate of a Terminator. Gubbs fired his stubber at the huge Astartes, but the bullets did little more than bounce off harmlessly.

In anger, the Terminator roared something that sounded like molasses and rushed the Kaptin. His speed was surprising for a warrior in such heavy armor, and Gubbs had time to do little more than feel that surprise before his legs were ripped off at the knees and he was sent flying to the deck. Lying there, he looked up and watched as the Iron Warrior stabbed him in the chest with its power claw.

As he died, Gubbs figured he would be back up in about five minutes, give or take.

_Four Minutes, Forty-Five Seconds Later_

Gubbs's open eyes regained their sight and he blinked. The bolters had stopped shooting, and most of the boys had moved on, leaving only one behind with a corridor strewn with dead Iron Warriors.

Gaz helped Gubbs up from the floor and handed him back his stubber. "Youse missed da fight, Kaptin."

Gubbs felt his new legs and chest. Both had formed back the right way, but his legs seemed a little funny. He swayed on his feet, unsteady.

"Whut ya mean?" he asked.

Gaz shrugged. "Not une minute after youse went down, da Boss came up wit da rest uv da boyz and kicked the snot outta these Chaos lot." Gaz gestured at the bodies.

Gubbs nodded. "Where's da Boss now?"

"Da bridge, I fink." Gaz scratched his head. "He took da baddie leader wiv him, too. Told me ta stay 'ere; wait fer youse ta git up."

"Trone uv 'Erra," Gubbs cursed, moving up the hall. "Come on, den! We'z gotta catch up!"

(' ')

Fert watched the scene on the bridge intermittently thanks to his new helmet. It was an Iron Warriors helm, and it kept bobbing around on his head so that he couldn't see straight. To be fair, he could barely see out of both eye slits at once as it was, but the wobbling didn't help.

The owner of the helm glared at him, but he couldn't do anything. His power claw was broken, as were his legs, and he knelt in front of the Boss with three chainaxes held at his neck from different angles. Even if he could get past that, he would still have the Boss to deal with, who from his position above the Iron Warrior with his thunder hammer could do him in quite quickly.

Confident in his safety, Fert made a farting noise with his mouth and flashed the Astartes with his green arse cheeks.

"Well, Warsmith, it looks like you've had quite a run here," the Inquisitor said, ignorant or uncaring of Fert's vulgar showing. "New ship, new crew, but the same old games of siege-and-go, all across the Segmentum, all brought to an end here."

Mettarion chuckled. "Idiot mortal, you don't bother me. Do you think this will be my first death in these ten thousand years?"

Tripe didn't. In fact, he knew for certain that it would be Mettarion's third, just like he knew that, as always, the Warsmith's popularity with his daemon of a Primarch would ensure his implantation into another ready body on the Iron Warrior's home of Medrengard.

So, he didn't waste his voice on threats. Instead, he turned to Gort.

"I'm going to do it now," he said. "Keep an eye on the bastard."

Gort nodded, and Tripe stepped forward. As he did so, the big ork set a hand on his shoulder.

"Careful," he rumbled.

Tripe nodded and knelt down in front of Mettarion, so that his face was level with the Warsmith's. At Gort's command, seven orks grabbed on to Mettarion's body, holding him steady.

"What are you doing?" Mettarion hissed. Acidic saliva dribbling down his chin, and an ork clamped a hand over the Warsmith's mouth.

Tripe reached out, placing both his neo-steel shod hands onto the Warsmith's temples. Carefully, he reached out with his mind, touching Mettarion's. Their conscious minds met, and Tripe saw into the Warsmith's soul.

Two things were revealed to him. One was important, and exactly the piece of information he was looking for.

The other simply made him scream.

Fert watched as the Inquisitor fell to the decking, his armored from convulsing as it tried to interpret the horrific thought signals strobing along Tripe's spinal link with his suit. The Warsmith bucked, throwing off the orks holding him, and began to stand despite his injuries.

Gort shouted for his Marauders to stand clear and swung his hammer, ending Mettarion's life in a spray of pulverized skull chunks and destroyed armor. The Terminator fell to the deck with a reverberating thud.

Gort spat on the corpse.

Fert ran to the Inquisitor and pushed his visor open. The man's eyes were rolled over white, and his flesh was the pallid shade of a corpse as it rippled with the rhythm of the seizures gripping him.

"Oh, dregs," Fert muttered, slapping the Inquisitor on the cheeks. "C'mon, c'mon!"

Gort kicked him aside and knelt down, shaking the Inquisitor by the shoulder. "Wake up, Boss Tripe! Whut's it? Whut's it?"

The Inquisitor muttered something beneath his breath.

"Whut youse say, Boss?" Gort asked.

The huge ork leaned in, and Tripe whispered to him.

"Adamus," he said.

**Author's Note: I'm really happy with the positive response this story has garnered, and plan to keep it on schedule until it reaches the end of its run. Gort's merry band of half-wits is remarkable fun to write, and I'm not having any trouble keeping it together.**

**Oh, and if you haven't read _The Confederate_, Adamus is a Chaos Space Marine with considerable skill and a tendency to cause problems for the Imperium. He's a very bad man, and I swear is the last thing you'll have to know from that show. Promise.  
**

**Anyway, that's about it for me. Review if you please.**

**Later.  
**


	4. Chapter 4

Alexander Tripe had followed Adamus Luchance's every move in one capacity or another for close on thirty years, but it wasn't until recent months that the Chaos lord had become his chief focus. During his time with the Ordo Xenos, Adamus had been little more than a side-project, a topic that Tripe investigated recreationally, supplying his findings to Inquisitor Laguanus, though most of the notes were ignored.

Laguanus was an older Malleus conservative, who had in a long and illustrious career of over three hundred years killed many lords stronger and older than Adamus. To Laguanus, Adamus Luchance was a minor footnote in the waning years of his career, his last triumph.

As it turned out, that was completely accurate. Laguanus died on Titan, close to the Grey Knights he had worked with so much over the centuries. The Knights had honored Laguanus with a home in their fortress monastery, and it was in that spartan chamber that he died, executed by a servitor.

Two attendants had dragged the tainted servitor to an incinerator, while the slave babbled the same name time and time again; Adamus, Adamus, Adamus.

The case went to Laguanus's chief interrogator assistant, a weasel of a man named Quixos or Quion or some damn thing, who lasted about six months before he led himself and a trio of Grey Knights into a trap on a backwater space station somewhere near the Ghoul Stars. By all accounts, Adamus's strike cruiser opened fire on the station, obliterating it, the Grey Knights, the newly christened Inquisitor and the Ordo Malleus speed frigate that had ferried them there.

From then, no one bothered trying to bring an end to Adamus except the Grey Knights, who had moved the matter internally, keeping it independent from the Ordo Malleus as a whole. The Knights of Titan were notoriously independent, and their frankness with the matter was not at all surprising.

Tripe kept tabs on the ongoing issue, until finally Adamus was involved in a run-in with the Battle Saint on the planet Morahame, a pleasure world in the Ultima Segmentum. The details were sketchy, but Adamus's name was definitely attached, and that peaked Tripe's interest.

Now working for the Ordo Secretes, Tripe had the resources and the motivation to take the task on headfirst, and for the past two years had worked as exclusively as his position would allow, working his way to the heart of Luchance's labyrinthine manipulations.

There had been so many close calls, on worlds like Severus, Vallion, Kkrakorto, Amitin, and Horth, so many near-glimpses and half-heard phrases, so many destroyed temples, broken caverns, so many instances of arriving just after his quarry had gone, the battlefield still smoking.

And that was the worry, Tripe realized. The worry that Sylvann would be more of the same, just another world of missed chances and botched opportunities.

As the Alterian armor crawled across the wastes, Tripe stood up in the Chimera's cupola, looking out across the plagued deserts toward the hives in the distance.

"Will this world be different?" he asked the ork next to him. "Or will we fail again?"

Gort didn't respond, because Gort didn't hear him. The ork leader was too busy sleeping against the ceramite wall, his massive legs slung up on the cargo bench.

_Green is Best_

_Chapter Four: Rekonnaissance _

Maxwell Phellan stood in the lead Chimera, the front bumper of which was just fifty meters behind a row of ork attack cycles. The cycles belched smoke and threw ash high into the air, and the roar of their engines echoed across the landscape. As far as outriders went, the Marauders were about the least stealthy Phellan had ever seen.

"Colonel?" said a voice.

"What is it, Chayman?"

Trooper Chayman adjusted his voxset over his shoulder and looked back at his commanding officer. "You've spit on the decking, sir."

"Did I?"

"A lot, sir."

Phellan looked down. The decking between his boots was beginning to puddle with saliva. It vibrated in time with the engine, creating quick ripples.

"So I have," Phellan said.

"You okay, sir?"

Phellan looked at Chayman. In the Alterian tradition of service, most castermen were younger, the teenaged children of the noble families. In order to hold any kind of political power on Alteria, it was necessary to have served in the Guard. The system, of course, was rigged so that the noble-born were given easy jobs, and fifteen year-old Chayman was no exception.

That said, the lad was very conversational, and Phellan had learned to confide in him during the downtime. Besides, Phellan planned to retire at some point, and having a nobleman amongst his friends might come in handy.

"Not a bit, Chayman," he said. "I don't know if this is a shock to you, but I don't much like being near a xenos without shooting it, much less following the damn things in a convoy."

Chayman shrugged. "The Inquisitor trusts them."

"I can't believe you said that."

"Why shouldn't we, sir?"

Phellan turned to the boy. "You have a primer, right?"

"Absolutely, Colonel."

"In there, does it not expressly say that we should never trust the xenos?"

"It does, Colonel."

"And where does it expressly say that we should ever trust an inquisitor?"

Chayman frowned. "I don't believe it does, sir."

"Exactly, Chayman." Phellan turned back to the front. "And we won't, either. From now until I tell you, trust no one who isn't an Alterian."

The convoy pulled out of the wastes and into a narrow gorge. The walls of the gulley vaulted above them in minutes, and the wind from the outside wastes ceased its constant buffeting. The outriders' engine noise compounded in the closer confines, and the Chimeras formed up two-by-two in order to fit. The outriders came to halt in the middle of the gorge, and Phellan ordered an all stop over the regimental vox. Slowly, the Chimeras ground down into motionlessness, their engines silenced.

The outriders got down from their cycles, pulling at their leather greaves and hooting to each other in some kind of alien battle-cant, and Phellan spat on the deck again.

Chayman spoke up again, trying to lighten the mood. "Well, Colonel, at least you only have a few to deal with, huh?"

The big ork named Gort stood up from his Chimera and howled something into the air, and a moment later, the ribbed erosion ledges in the cliffsides were filled by well over three thousand additional Marauders.

Their equipment ranging from stubbers to colossal, anti-tank laser contraptions, the orks aimed down at the convoy in ready stances. Green laser targeters played across the Chimeras, chasing one another. Several of the greenskins laughed at the stupidity of it.

Chayman chuckled. Phellan shot him a glare, and the casterman shut up.

"Frigging orks," Phellan grunted.

(' ')

Gubbs's kompany returned to the gorge at dusk. They came quietly enough to avoid notice by most of the orks. Those that did spot the kommandos acknowledged them with little more than a grin and a nod—Gubbs's game was a well-known tradition in the Marauders, and no one wanted to spoil it.

None of the humans knew of their presence until they popped up at the heart of the Chimera parking area, and even this was only because Gubbs was sure he had won and that hiding didn't matter any more.

Standing, the kaptain threw his stealth helm back and shouted. "'Ey, looks like da Boss ain' so good wit' keepin' 'is eye open, don' it, Gaz?"

The Alterians snapped around, lasguns weaving into position. Gubbs's kommandos ignored them.

"Yeaher, Kaptain."

"Looks like I'z winning 'gain, don' it, Gaz?"

"Sure, Kaptain."

"Not a one uv us gotz snatched, did we?"

"Not a one, Kaptain."

"Oh really?" Gort lumbered out from behind a Chimera, one of Gubbs's kommandos held in his hand. The ork looked sad, hanging from the scruff of his neck in the grasp of the much larger Warboss. "Guess 'gain, Gubbs, 'cuz I gotz dis'n 'ere easy 'nough."

Gubbs threw down his stubber and grunted out a curse. "Who's it? Who's it? Dat Urks?" Urks, did youse git caught 'gain?"

"Yeaher," Urks said from Gort's hand.

"Urks, youse a useless Git, youse know dat?"

"Yeaher, Kaptain," Urks said. "I'z surry."

Gort dropped Urks and walked over to his second, setting a meaty palm of Gubbs's shoulder. "I win 'gain."

"Yeaher, youse win."

"Good." Gort leaned in. "Real quick, 'fore Tripe asks: good er bad?"

Gubbs shrugged. "'Pends on how much work youse wanna do."

Gort frowned. "Lotsa fanks, Gubbs."

"Youse sarkasms ain't 'preciated, Boss."

Gort stood to his full height just as Tripe walked up from his personal Chimera. The Inquisitor's armor was spotless, and he wore a fresh cape, unblemished by the ash that had coated his previous one on the overland trip to the gorge.

"Ah, hello, Kaptain," Tripe said. The Inquisitor made an effort to put the orky accent on the hard 'k', as a way to fit in with the Marauders. He had always done so, and it had always aggravated Gubbs to no end. "I trust your scouting went well?"

"Yeaher, youse could say dat," Gubbs replied. He put his helmet in the crux of his arm and tried to act more like a Beaky, just as Gort had instructed all the kaptains to do when in Tripe's presence. As the Boss said, it made them look more presentable, whatever the sog that meant.

Tripe smiled. "So, should we go over this in more detail, then?"

"Yeaher," Gubbs said. "We'z got picts an' such."

"And I have a hololith." Tripe gestured to his Chimera. "If you would, gentlemen?"

(' ')

When Tripe wasn't around, the Marauders didn't have war councils. They didn't need them. Killing was killing; every ork knew that. Talking about it beforehand just got in the way of things. If something went wrong and a few of the boys got chewed up, then it didn't matter, 'cause they'd be back in a few and killing again, and that was that, unless they were fighting the metal boys, but that never happened.

How the Boss kept his head in these meetings was beyond Gubbs. Even with his mind occupied by narrating the picts on the screen, it took all the kaptain's concentration to keep from itching the part between his arse cheeks where a little lump of poo was making its itchy home on a boil.

"So dis 'ere's da out fence uv da city," Gubbs said. He focused on the pict of the hive city, not of the little turd that wanted so badly to be flicked and pulled at with his fingers because it felt like it was burning a hole through his 'ardpants just with the furiousness of its itchiness. "Next."

Fert, who with his too-big-for-his head Terminator helm was acting as a translator between the hololith and the orky pict machine, banged his head with a rock. The image flickered out to reveal a floorplan of the hive city in as perfect a detail as Gubbs could manage with a scrap of chalk and some dried parchment.

"Da easiest 'proach is 'ere, in da west. Da gate got whopped in 'it an' 'un a while back, an' dey still ain' fixed it none. Only fing guardin' it's a buncha Chosen, but dey ain' dat big a deal."

Across the table, the humie colonel looked up. "How many Chosen, captain?"

The humie didn't try to sound orky when he said the rank, but Gubbs still didn't like him. For one, the colonel tried to make the rank sound like an insult, and for two, he was trying to make Gubbs count.

"Dunno, mebbe a cup or two," Gubbs said. The humie frowned and arched an eyebrow. Gubbs thought that meant he got it.

Tripe spoke up. "What about the enemy commander? Did you get any information on him?"

"Uh, yeaher," Gubbs said. "Fert, skip tru da next few, right?"

"Yeaher, Kaptain."

The picts flicked past quickly, until one came up. Gubbs told Fert to go back to it, and the gretchin did, letting it resolve as clearly as the crude capture machine would let it.

Tripe pounded the hololith, denting it with his neo-steel glove. "He's here! Gort, when can your Marauders attack?"

Gort shook himself out of the half-sleep he had been in for the past half-hour and looked at Gubbs. "Whataya fink, Gubbs? Mornin' sound good to youse?"

"Yeaher, we'z can do mornin'," Gubbs replied. "Gotta check wit Dorf, though, make sure 'is boyz're ready to take down da tanks."

"Dorf's ready," Gort said, turning back to Tripe. "Mornin's good, Boss."

"Perfect!" Tripe shouted. "Everyone, please, clear out. I have work to do."

Colonel Phellan raised a hand. "Excuse me, captain? What did you say about tanks?"

But Gubbs was already gone, three meters outside the Chimera and running a finger down the back of his 'ardpants and sighing with the kind of pleasure that only comes with scratching a bad itch.

(' ')

After everyone else had cleared out of the Chimera, Gort remained in place, hunched to keep from hitting the roof as he looked at the Inquisitor. "Boss, what's it?"

"Adamus is here," Tripe replied.

"Oh."

"We're close, Gort. We're so very close." Tripe looked up at him. "Tomorrow. Do you realize that we could have him dead by tomorrow morning?"

"Yeaher."

Tripe sat down on one of the troop benches and folded his hands between his legs. He looked up at Gort again. It was as if he couldn't decide what to look at. He was completely giddy.

"We've got him."

"Yeaher we do, Boss. But I'z gotta know one fing."

"What's that?"

"Who's dis Adarmus, anyway?"

**Author's Note: Now that we're back in the present-day of the story, the plot can move forward. Expect lotsa dakka next chapta.**

**Oy, and pleaze revs da fic. Makez it real flash fer me.**

**Later.**


End file.
